Office Policies

Payment/Insurance

North Shore Psychiatry operates on a fee-for-service basis. Payment for sessions is due at the time of the appointment unless alternate arrangements have been made ahead of time. We do not accept insurance. This policy protects your privacy to the highest possible degree, allows greater flexibility in developing a plan of treatment with you, allows our physicians to spend more time with each patient, and optimizes accessibility to our staff and appointments. Many of our patients find this approach preferable.

Some patients who do have insurance are able to obtain partial "out-of-network" reimbursement for fees paid particularly those with PPOs. After your appointment, you will receive a receipt for your visit, containing procedure and diagnostic codes. You then submit this receipt yourself to your insurance for possible reimbursement. Every company and plan has different policies and reimbursement rates.

Cancellations

When you make an appointment with North Shore Psychiatry, we reserve that time exclusively for you. We do not double-book or over-book our schedules like many other medical and psychiatric offices. Because of this, we ask that you provide us with as much notice as possible should you need to change an appointment, by calling the main office number 978-922-8600.

Med Refills

If you are low on medication, please contact us at least several days before you run out.
If you leave a message, please provide the following information:
- Your name and date of birth
- Exact medication name (including suffixes such as "ER" or "CR")
- Medication strength (mg)
- Medication frequency (how many tablets, how many times per day)
- Name & phone # of your pharmacy.
- Your phone #, in case of problems.

Please remember that we cannot call or fax into pharmacies prescriptions for Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta, Focalin and other stimulant medications. By law, these require a written prescription.

Privacy and Confidentiality

It is of the utmost importance that information about you remains absolutely confidential whenever possible. We believe that this is a critical element in developing the trust and openness essential in the process of addressing mental health issues. Unless you explicitly notify us otherwise, we will generally assume that you wish your personal information to remain strictly confidential. In any situation where we believe that release of information would be beneficial, we will request your written consent via a Release of Information (ROI). In the routine course of our practice, no one but our staff will access any of your demographic or clinical information. If you are seeing a psychotherapist in addition to us, we will generally request your permission to remain in touch with that person. We may also ask your permission to allow contact with your primary care physician or others whose care may interact critically with our work. It is of course your choice whether to permit such contact or not. The greatest level of privacy can be obtained by not involving insurance companies in your mental health care. However, if you request, we will supply you with invoices for our sessions, which you may submit to your insurance company seeking reimbursement. This allows you the greatest control over where and when any information about you is released. Please know that insurance companies require a diagnosis and description of the service rendered in order to cover any costs. This information will be indicated on our invoice. There are unusual circumstances in which the law may require a health professional to release information about you without your authorization. These situations are very rare and we will work relentlessly to avoid them. Such situations include: (1) If our staff have reason to believe that you pose a direct threat of imminent harm to any individual (including yourself), and (2) If we have reason to believe that abuse or neglect of a child, elder, dependent or disabled person is taking place.

Finally, although client/psychiatrist communications are generally protected as confidential under the law, our staff may be court ordered to disclose information about you in the course of a judicial or legal proceeding. We also reserve the right to use and disclose information about you if doing so is necessary to defend our staff in any legal action brought against us in relation to your care.